Why I have not been around much!

for the techies:-

The machine was built by Wired2Fire in the UK, their web site is www.wired2fire.co.uk

And please do not ask how much, I cringe at the cost....

I think the major improvement has not come so much from the processor, but from the Solid State Hard Drive, Access times have reduce so much it is unbelievable.

I think that if someone said to me what would I recommend to improve system speeds I would list them as follows:-

1. Solid State Hard Drive (240 Gbs or over)
2. Graphics Card
3. Processor/Memory/Motherboard

The thing about using the SSHD is that you still have your old hard drive to use to store NON-FS programes, so you can run FSX entirely on the SSHD, save and run all the other install files, fsx utilies, office and that sort of stuff from the old HD.

Of course the worse part about changing over is starting totally from scratch, but if you have more that one HD now you can back up onto the second hard drive, before you install a new SSHD and start from there. 

All I have on the SSHD are the SYSTEM files, AVG and FSX. thats it!

Everything else I will install/download/data will go on the other drive, but with two computers now, and both networked, I will use my old machine for the boring chores like e-mail and such like and the other new machine exclusively for FSX. Notice I did not include answering questions on the forum in boring

At the moment with my new system nearly finished, with 1000's of AI repaints, scenery, the 30 or so aircraft I regulary fly for fun, some beta tests, some fsx utilities like UT2, scenery designer and AFX I have only used about 50% of the SSHD space. By being careful of what I actually install on the SSHD there should be no problem.

I just make sure now that when installing an aircraft from Flight One for instance, I save the download file onto my "E" drive, then when I am installing the aircraft, I ensure that the install file that is created during the install is also saved onto my "E" drive. That way only the aircraft FSX files are actually placed onto my SSHD, all the .lic, .key, download and install files are on my "E" drive. Unfortunately that is a problem with the Flight 1 system is that you actually use three times the space when you down load, the aircraft files themselves, the downloaded file and the installer file. Of course you can delete the downloaded file and installer file and just keep the .key file if you need to re-install in the future.

 I am even running some of the smaller Utilities I use from the "E" drive to save SSHD disc space.

With the cost of SSHD drive falling almost daily, in the future, if or when I run out of space, then I will get another bigger drive and upgrade that way. But I hope that is a long, long way in the future  

I hope this machine is going to last longer than the 3 or 4 years my previous machines have lasted, purely on the fact that it does everything I want it to do well, in fact as far as FSX is concerned it does it to the limits of FSX. So really SSHD disc space is the only problem I can see arising in the future as I install more and more aircraft and scenery.